Dear Evin
by Rainstorm Amaya Arianrhod
Summary: How to make your subordinates think they've lost their wits: appoint them Commander of the Queen's Riders... by letter.


**A/N:** Thanks go to Strapless for the plotbunny and Kally for feedback. :) **_Please read and review!_**

**Disclaimer:** TP owns Tortall.

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The letter was written in the confines of an office, filled with papers and broken pens and personal belongings hidden somewhere under years of petty paperwork (and this might have worried the woman who wrote the letter, with a ship north waiting and her baggage packed, were it not for the fact that she was certain that she could pick any lock her successor cared to put on the door and retrieve anything she left behind.)

The letter was written in an untidy scrawl, with the occasional unholy snicker as the author imagined the consternation that would appear on the receiver's face. The letter was signed, sealed, and addressed to _Evin Larse, Rider Group Commander, Seventh (Nightbreath), Wherever They Are Now _in the confident expectation that some long-suffering clerk would cross out the last and write in the proper location.

The letter went much like this:

Dear Evin,

I'm retiring, you're Commander. There's lots of paperwork in Corus I'm sure you're just dying to put out of its misery, so get your behind up to Corus quick sharp and do it. Have fun!

Your favourite slave-driver, Buri.

After a brief pause for consideration, the author added under the address in large capitals: NOT FOR RETURN, INTERCEPTION, OR DESTRUCTION, AND THAT MEANS YOU, EVIN LARSE.

After another brief pause she wrote another letter, this time addressed to _Miri Fisher, Rider Group Commander, Seventeenth (Askew), Wherever They Are Now_, which went much like this:

Dear Miri,

I'm retiring, Evin's Commander. Don't let him wriggle out of this.

Thanks, Buri.

She sealed the letter to Miri off as well, and left the room, picking up a small statue of Chavi Westwind half-buried under a landslide of horse-feed reports dating back to the Immortals War as she went. The shutters had been closed already; now she shut and locked the door with the set of keys she intended to keep just in case (there had been the official set, which were enclosed in Evin's letter, but ever since the incident when someone had successfully held to ransom the quartermaster's keys she kept a spare.)

Passing the sack all the Riders tossed their post into in the vague hope that it would reach the addressee, she dropped the letters in and continued onwards to where a couple of carriages, an escort of the King's Own and horses waited for her. Princess Shinkokami, Lady Haname and Lady Yukimi –also headed for a northern fort- would probably have been tapping their feet with impatience, had they not been Yamani, and Lady Yukimi certainly let out a brief sigh that might have been a 'Goddess be thanked! Finally!' from a Tortallan. Buri ignored it, stuffed the statuette into the saddlebags on her pony and mounted. The ladies vanished into their carriage, and the whole cavalcade set out on the road to a small naval harbour where they would take a ship to northern Tortall.

The letters in the sack were picked up and carried by a fast courier. Though the long-suffering clerk who usually amended Buri's eccentric addresses -a habit of Buri's which had never been corrected by important letters going astray because of it- did come into contact with the letters, he decided once and for all that he'd had enough and passed them on. Nevertheless, the Rider Groups' names did the business, and so one bright and shining day at Fort Mastiff, where both Nightbreath and Askew were billeted, both letters ended up in the fort commander's office.

It was the practice of all officers to amble past the office and check to see if they or their direct inferiors had received any post, and it so happened that Miri Fisher's second-in-command got to the Riders' mail before anyone else. Being a kind person, he took the whole lot down to the mess hall, 

and delivered a very brief note to Miri Fisher into her hand, graciously accepting her thanks, and dropped a surprisingly heavy letter that clinked into Evin Larse's lap (for which he got a sleepy mutter that might, or might not, have been 'thanks'.)

Both friends set aside their breakfast to open their correspondence. Well, Miri set aside her breakfast; Evin, often dubbed 'the Bottomless Pit' by his friends, continued to spoon porridge into his mouth almost mechanically while trying to tear open the seal with one hand. Miri broke the seal on hers, opened it, and started to read. A convulsive expression, which was probably best identified as squashed laughter, passed over her face Evin put the spoon down, the better to wrestle with the seal, and finally managed to break it. A set of keys fell out and splashed into Evin's porridge. The Rider eyed them with sleepy-eyed perturbation, fished them out, licked his fingers and started on the letter.

"_What_!" The shriek from Evin, uncharacteristically high-pitched and shockingly loud, echoed through the mess hall. Heads turned. Miri winced.

"Miri!" Evin said.

"What? I'm right here," Miri answered. "No call for shouting."

Evin ignored her. "Our darling Commander," he declared, loud enough to scare the pigeons off the roof, "has finally gone utterly mad! Bats in the belfry! I said it was coming! I told you so! She has completely lost her marbles! This is absurd! Someone get Lord Raoul to talk sense to her!"

"What's absurd?" Farant demanded, from the spot a safe distance away that he had moved to after Evin had shrieked.

Evin almost let his head fall forward to hit the table, but recalled the half-finished porridge and stopped himself just in time. "She's made me Commander," he mumbled, head hanging. "She's retiring and she's made me Commander."

"I know," Miri said calmly, returning to her own breakfast. "She told me not to let you wriggle out of it. To be honest, Evin, the betting was evens on it being you to replace her anyway. And I suppose we could do a lot worse, as commanders go."

"Miri. I'm _doomed_. I'm a _terrible_ commander!"

"Don't be silly, I'm sure you'll do very well. I may have to quit, given the shambles you'll make of things at first-"

A hand shot out and seized her wrist, jolting the spoon she held and catapulting porridge onto the table. "_No_. Please don't quit!"

An army sergeant coughed. Most of the attentive mess hall, not being possessed of bats' ears, hadn't heard Evin's muttered explanation. "Some of us didn't even hear what was the matter, so if you wouldn't mind saying, we'd like to know-"

"I was joking," Miri said quietly to Evin, and then louder, "Of course, Sergeant. My friend here just got made Commander. It's not the sort of news he responds to well at this time in the morning."


End file.
